The rise of the Internet has occasioned two disparate phenomena: the increase in the presence of social networks, with their corresponding member profiles visible to large numbers of people, and the increase in the use of these social networks to perform searches for people and companies. It is common for companies to be listed in one or more industries in profiles of these social networks. These industries are generally selected from an industry taxonomy, namely a data structure maintained by the social networking service. This industry taxonomy may include a hierarchical organization of possible industries. For example, an industry category of “Information Technology” in the industry taxonomy may have sub-categories of “Computer Software”, “Computer Hardware”, and “Computer Networking”. The industry taxonomy may organize the sub-categories as children of a parent node corresponding to “Information Technology.” There may be many layers of categories and subcategories in the industry taxonomy.
Typically an industry corresponding to a company will be determined by the company itself when the company establishes a profile page. Thus, for example, company XYZ, when creating a profile page, may select the “Information Technology” industry along with the sub-categories of “Computer Software” and “Computer Hardware,” electing not to select “Computer Networking.” Alternatively, third parties, such as administrators of the social networking service, can assign industries to companies when the profile pages are established.
One problem that arises, however, is that the industry a company practices in may shift over time, and yet companies (and third parties) will rarely manually update the profile page to reflect these changes. For example, if Company XYZ later begins to develop products related to “Computer Networking,” nobody has updated the profile to reflect that the company now practices in the “Computer Networking” industry, and thus searches made for companies or people in the “Computer Networking industry” will not return results pertaining to Company XYZ or its employees, despite the fact that such results would now be relevant.
Another problem that arises is that industry categories and sub-categories may evolve over time. Specifically, new industries arise all the time, and thus it is important for new categories and subcategories of industries to be applied to existing companies, if relevant. Yet, once again, companies (and third parties) rarely manually update the profile page to reflect the additions of new industries, even if the underlying industry taxonomy has been updated with the new categories or subcategories.